My family and I visited Troy's Prospect Park a few weeks ago. While walking along one of the trails I found the remnants of a small Bible that someone had torched. As I picked it up my imagination got the best of me. I was thinking about persecuted Christians around the world and a testimony I heard, recently, about a man who was imprisoned for handing out Bibles. He shared how his Bible was confisctated as he was interrogated, then beaten and placed into a locked room. One of his captors burned his bible right before his eyes and then left him alone, with nothing more than a small window for light. He noticed, as he sat there, in that clold, almost darkened room, that a small portion of his pocket bible still remained among the ashes of his burned Bible. So he grabbed it and held onto it. He was released from captivity a few weeks later. He shared how that small piece of his Bible, just a portion of a few pages that had not burned, kept him going. He read those scriptures over and over, which gave Him strength and hope.So often I am guilty of taking my Bible, along with my freedom to read and study it in peace, for granted. I keep this portion of Scripture that I found in my wallet, as a reminder that the freedom I have came at a cost. Now I realize that these burned pages are probably the remains of some kind of sick joke. But they are a nice reminder anyway!
